


eye of the hurricane (and i feel fine)

by AppleJuiz



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Michelle Jones, Emotionally Processing That Post Credit Scene, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 04:56:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19805203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleJuiz/pseuds/AppleJuiz
Summary: “MJ?” Peter asks. “What’s going on?”She squints at him. “Your shit just blew up,” she says. “On national television.”“Um, I was there, yeah,” he says.“So,” she continues. “What’s your plan?”





	eye of the hurricane (and i feel fine)

**Author's Note:**

> So I was planning on just ignoring that post credit scene all together but then this happened. I had a fun therapeutic time writing this so I hope you have a fun therapeutic time reading!

In the eighth grade he failed a history test and had the first panic attack of many. May kept trying to hug him but he couldn’t seem to calm down enough to be ready for someone to touch him, kept pacing away from her and struggling to breath while she made soothing noises and spouted platitudes about how everything would be fine. 

He remembers calming down but he forgets how exactly he did it. Just that May stroked his hair afterward and one test in middle school can’t actually ruin your life. 

He’s trying now, desperately, to remember how to snap out of a panic spiral but it’s even harder since this time May seems just as panicked, pacing the living room, glancing nervously at the windows. 

He doesn’t know what to do and May doesn’t know what to do and he doesn’t know who in the world he could contact that would know what to do. Happy? Fury? 

He doesn’t know how much time he has or who would believe him or who can actually help him. He hasn’t checked his phone, he hasn’t checked the news, not since zapping away from Penn Station, following the LIRR tracks to Flushing and not looking down, not looking at the crowds, not listening to anything but the rush of wind. 

He thought about whether it was safe or not to go home, but everyone knows. Everyone knows. There’s no secret anymore. There’s no safe and there’s no being careful. 

May is trying to keep calm, he can tell. But there’s fear in her eyes and the apartment slowly fills with questions unspoken, “What happens now?”, “What do we do?”, and “Why?” and “How?” and “Where?” and “When?”.

There’s a knock on the door, sharp and jarring. May drops pacing, presses her hand to her chest. Peter feels his limbs go numb.

The silence is crushing and cold and he can’t breathe, suddenly and painfully. 

The knocking continues, louder and deeper, like a flat palm slamming against the wood. 

“Peter, I swear to God.” It’s MJ. That’s worse somehow, than anything else he was expected, than cops or reporters or the whole of New York City.

May goes to the door before Peter is able to move again. 

“Hi sweetie,” May says in the doorway, a powerful facade of calm and collected that might fool someone who doesn’t know better. MJ usually knows better. “I don’t think now is the best time.”

“Obviously, Mrs. Parker. That’s the point.” 

And MJ is slipping under May’s arm and strolling into the apartment, looking just as wonderful as she had earlier, back before the world flipped upside down. Her hair is pulled back into a messy knot now and she drops three large plastic bags on the coffee table. 

“Okay,” she says, ruffling through the bags. 

“MJ,” he says blinking.

She tosses something at him and it’s a small miracle he actually catches it despite the way his brain is screaming in fifteen different directions. 

It’s a flip phone. 

“Mrs. Parker,” she says, handing another one over to May who seems just as stunned. “I already put the numbers in while I was on the subway. I also bought extras in case these are compromised.”

“Uh… what?” Peter asks. He opens the phone. It’s old. There’s a little contacts list with three names: April, Jane, Nick. 

“They’re burner phones,” she explains, pushing her bangs behind her ears. 

“April.” She points at May. “Jane.” She points at herself. 

“Nick?”

There’s another knock on the door. MJ grins weakly. 

“Nick,” she says as May ushers Ned into the apartment. 

“Oh my God!” Ned says. “You were on the news. Like  _ you _ you, Peter. I didn’t even know but then MJ texted and told me to come over and there was this Buzzfeed article about it that I read on the bus. I can’t believe it.”

MJ throws a burner phone at him. 

“Give me your real phone,” she says, grabbing Peter’s from his back pocket as she walks over to the couch. 

“What?” Ned asks as MJ snatches his. 

“MJ?” Peter asks. “What’s going on?”

She squints at him. 

“Your shit just blew up,” she says. “On national television.”

“Um, I was there, yeah,” he says. 

“So,” she continues. “This is the age of the internet, Parker. You have 30 million new followers on Instagram. 20 mil on Twitter. There are pictures of you and Ned on Instagram, pictures of the decathlon team, pictures of this apartment and any hacker worth a damn can find a GPS location from a picture’s core data file. So you have maybe a half hour before everyone knows where you live and where Ned lives and what high school you go to-”

“Okay!” he squeaks. She says it all so nonchalantly, like it’s something cool she found online, some hot take about a movie she hated. It’s very MJ, cool and unaffected as she describes his life literally falling to pieces. 

“So what’s your plan?” she asks, tilting her head, scrutinizing him like she does when she quizzes him in decathlon. Ned’s looking at him too, nervous and wearing it all over his face. May is in the kitchen, glancing over, pouring cups of orange juice in an attempt to act like everything is fine. 

“I… I don’t know,” he breathes out, feels the enormous weight of the words settle on his chest, making it hard to breathe again. Round two of this awful never ending panic. “I don’t-”

“Cool,” she says, standing back up and reaching for the plastic bag. “I figured as much.”

She dumps the contents out, more phones, some papers, various makeup products. He and Ned exchange a look of equal confusion. MJ marches to the kitchen, swipes his wallet from the counter and takes a glass of orange juice from May. 

“Here’s the plan,” she says, sipping the orange juice and rummaging through his kitchen drawers. 

“The plan?” He asks. There was no plan. Only panic. The plan was to stop panicking and then come up with a better plan. 

“You are going to put on those color contacts,” she says, gesturing to the table. “I am going to introduce you to the magic of contouring and then we’re going to get out of here.”

She chugs the rest of the orange juice, sets the glass on the counter gently and uses a pair of scissors to cut one of his debit cards in half. 

“Um!” he says. 

“How much cash is in this apartment?” she asks May. “I have like two hundred bucks that I took out on the way over here. I’m sure Ned has some stuff too, right, Ned?”

May nods. “Probably a couple hundred, I’ll check the safe.”

“Perfect,” she says. “Peter, you have access to some Stark-level funds, right? Can you get that sweaty guy in the phone or something? Do you have Pepper Potts’ number?” 

She's staring at him, waiting for a response. His brain still isn’t on, still is buzzing with worry and wonder and a million other things. 

“What’s going on?” he asks. 

“We need to get our asses in gear,” she says shrugging. “I know a place, off the grid, but it’ll only stay that way if we start erasing our electronic trail. I already left mine on the train, hopefully someone has stolen it by now.”

He shakes his head. “No. No, I can’t drag you guys into this.”

“We’re already in this, Peter,” she says shrugging. “We’re FOS’s.” She meets Ned for a fist bump without looking. “Your Instagram isn’t private so Ned is already compromised. And all it takes is one tweet from Flash about how I have a crush on you and I’m compromised.”

“Wait, Flash knows you had- have a crush on me?” he asks. “Why?”

“Peter, everyone knows.” She 

“Your Instagram isn’t private?” Ned asks, raising an eyebrow. 

He pushes a hand through his hair. “I clicked the wrong thing when I was making the account. I was going to figure out how to switch it.” He turns to MJ who is back at her pile of stuff. “What are you doing?”

“I’m helping you,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “You clearly need my help. And you said you didn’t have a plan.”

“And you have a plan?” He asks. She nods. She looks confused, which is weird. She has no right to look confused, she’s what’s confusing, he’s confused by her and everything she’s saying and doing.

“Yeah, I have a plan,” she says. He’s still stuck between How and Why. “I've been ready to fake my own death for the past three years.”

“Why?” Ned asks. 

She shrugs. “Just in case.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. It was a thought experiment.”

“Why?” 

“Why not?”

“Six hundred and twenty seven dollars,” May calls from down the hall. 

MJ nods to herself, counts… something off on her fingers. 

“Okay,” she says. “I can work with that. Can we call Pepper Potts?”

“I have her number,” Peter offers. It’s looking more and more likely that he should just stand back and let this happen. It’s better than what was happening before at any rate. 

“Perfect,” MJ says, patting his shoulder as she sweeps by him. “I have a list of flights for her to purchase and a list of flights for you to purchase. Well even thrown in a few trains for variety.”

He nods like that makes sense. 

She claps once, the sound echoing through the apartment, cutting through the fuzzy bits in his brain. “Okay, let’s get to work.”

  
  
  


It all feels very cinematic: the contacts and the burner phones and the baseball hats and sunglasses. 

They leave the apartment in intervals with backpacks of clothes and toiletries and their burner phones and sit separately in the Greyhound bus terminal and try not to stare at the new reports on the tiny TVs on the back walls. He can’t help but sneak glances over at MJ. She just sits there, steadily moving through a thick book as the bus gets delayed and the minutes tick by. 

May keeps fidgeting, Ned taps away on his DS but it’s half hearted and he flinched every time someone moves near him. 

Peter still feels sick, deep in his stomach, less untethered than earlier but as the sun sets on this terrible, terrible day, more worried than ever for himself and for everyone he loves. 

This bus is twenty minutes late which for New York means it’s perfectly on time. He has a ticket under the name Kevin Adams and he tenses the entire time his ticket is scanned even though the employee couldn’t have looked more bored. Everyone else is already on the bus, clustered towards the front like MJ instructed. May has a window seat and a tired looking college student next to her. Ned is diagonally behind her, settling into his aisle seat. They exchange a glance, and Ned offers an optimistic smile, a weak attempt at one but appreciated nonetheless. 

There’s two open seats left near the front, both aisle seats. One of them is the seat next to MJ. 

He tries not to overthink it, just drops his backpack and sits. She squints at him and he hopes it’s not a bad thing. 

He stares straight ahead as the bus pulls along, drags itself out of Port Authority and takes to the streets. There’s music playing through his headphones but he can’t really hear it. 

MJ’s ankle hooks itself around his as they hurtle through the Lincoln Tunnel even as she continues reading along, head leaned up against the window. He breathes out slowly. 

New Jersey soars by out the window and he thinks of the ride back from Newark with May, the radio blasting, recounting every detail he could remember about the trip, everything he said to MJ and every reply. 

It felt good. It felt calm and normal. The summer seemed exciting and fresh and full of potential. 

He tries not to think about it too much now. 

“So… this cabin?” he asks slowly, quietly just in case the middle aged lady in the row behind them is eavesdropping. 

MJ rolls her eyes but nods, closing her book around her finger. 

“Is it yours?” 

“Yep. I don’t have a credit score yet but I’m renting a house in New Jersey,” she says drily. If anywhere would it would be New Jersey.

He doesn’t say that. 

“Well, if it’s not yours whose is it? Because it may be desperate times but I’m not sure squatting is the smartest or most ethical thing for-”

“It’s my mom’s,” she says, glancing down at her lap, tapping her toes. 

“Oh,” he says, scratching behind his ear. “Does she know? Uh, that were squatting in her cabin.”

She sighs, her chin dropping to her chest. 

“Right,” he says, nodding. “Obviously not because the police would question her and your dad first.”

She shrugs. “Smart thinking.” She opens her book again, starts skimming the page with her eyes. “Not exactly though. My mom lives in California so they probably won’t reach out to her at first, especially if they could confirm that I haven’t boarded a plane to the west coast.”

“Your mom’s in California?” He echoes before he can think, before he can remind himself that this is MJ and MJ has boundaries and walls, carefully fortified with turrets and auxiliary forces. Just because there is new information presented, just because she shares a little doesn’t mean he’ll get anymore and especially doesn’t mean he should push. 

“Yeah,” she says like it’s nothing, like they’re discussing the weather. “I got Blipped, right. Got back and found out that my parents got a divorce and my mom remarried and moved to LA.”

He blinks at her, swallowing around a surge of hurt in his throat, hurt for her, just thinking about her going through something like that, still going through that. It’s a fight not to say something too much, something that could be interpreted as pity or crossing her careful lines of emotional distance. 

“Yikes,” she says, grimacing. “Was that, like, weird. I’m new to this whole…” She gestures vaguely with her hand. “Being genuine and emotionally open thing. I’m doing wrong, aren’t I?”

He shakes his head violently. “No, no, I’m just… I’m sorry,” he says. “That sucks.”

She shrugs. “It’s whatever. I’m over it.”

Neither of those things sound entirely accurate but he’s had his fair share of self deceptions, of “it’s fine” and “I’m fine” to know their necessity. 

“Okay,” he says. Then counts to two hundred before reaching over and slipping his hand into hers. 

  
  
  


The cabin is small from the outside. 

They reconvene by the back door. MJ has given them each a map with a different set of walking directions drawn out in thick highlighter lines. It’s simultaneous awe inspiring and concerning how on top of this she is. Like he can marvel at how well she’s playing this 4D chess game against the system but also she had maybe an hour and a half and somehow managed to pull all these moving parts together. 

She pulls out a key and Ned asks about it and she says, “You don’t want to know the amount of places I have keys to, Leeds.”

The cabin is also small on the inside. It’s open planning, the living room and kitchen blending into each other, a small round table sitting on the border. 

“Down the hall there’s the master bedroom and the bathroom,” she announces, shucking her backpack off and onto the couch. “The water pressure sucks.”

He hovers in the threshold even as Ned and May walk forward and start looking around. It’s weird. This is all so weird. He feels calmer than he has all day but at the same time, this morning, not even 24 hours ago, he had spent ten minutes brushing his teeth because he had a date with MJ and he was thinking about working up the courage to kiss again. 

Now he stands in her mother’s beach cabin on the run from the government with a burner phone in his back pocket. 

“Mrs. Parker, you can take the bedroom,” MJ says, gesturing down the hall. “I’ll take the couch. There’s a sleeping bag in the closet over there and one in Peter’s bag.”

He pats at his bag, letting it slide off his shoulders. “Really?”

She rolls her eyes, something which he’s slowly learning means he’s done something cute or something annoying. 

There is in fact a sleeping bag in his backpack, bright red and packed smaller and tighter than it has any right to be. How MJ managed to squeeze it in there along with a metric shit ton of granola bars, clothes, and three trees worth of toilet paper, he’ll never know. Maybe she has her own set of superpowers centered exclusively around planned and packing. 

She continues moving around the cabin, closing the blinds as she goes, checking the contents of the fridge, the cabinets, under the sink. 

She comes to the living room side of the room, flicks the television on and tosses the remote at Ned. He almost fumbles it but manages to closing his fingers around it. He stands there waiting with it as MJ starts pushing the couch backward. 

It takes maybe a second too long for Peter to remember both his manners and his powers, moving further into the room and lifting the couch for her. She freezes, blinking up at him and staring, her eyes burning into a spot on his arm. 

He tries to not to blush. 

“What should I put on?” Ned asks. 

“I don’t know,” she says, eyes snapping away from Peter and down to the floor. “Cartoons? The Met game?”

Ned glances over at him like somehow he will have answers or explanations. He shrugs, or tries to while holding up the couch. 

MJ kneels on the hardwood, pushing an area rug back and prying up a panel of the flooring with her nails. 

“Whoa,” Peter says, but it sounds pretty weak. It’s another surprise but at this point he’s finding it hard to be shocked by anything. MJ could pull out a gun or a fake passport and he’d probably take in stride. 

She instead pulls out a family-sized tube of oatmeal. 

Which is weirder. But still, not even fazed. Why should it be anything else?

Ned still has the capability to be confused, gaping at the oatmeal as MJ reaches further into the nook. 

“Alright,” she says, assembling a small mountain of Spam, assorted canned vegetables, and a jumbo box of almonds. “If I’m doing the math correctly, this can last us the month if we’re careful.” She sits up and glares at them. “So let’s be careful, okay?”

Peter sets the couch down. Ned scratches an eyebrow. 

“So what’s the plan?” he asks, frowning. 

MJ glances around the cabin. 

“This is the plan?” she says, squinting.

“Where just gonna stay here?” Ned asks. “For how long? I have tickets for a Carly Rae Jepsen concert in August. I’m supposed to take the SAT in September.”

MJ shakes her head. “This is why you don’t wait for the last test date.”

“What happens in a month when we run out of food?” Ned continues, his voice pitching up, stress and fear and exhaustion crashing down. Peter can feel it in him too, but from a distance, like there’s a layer of plastic wrap between him and the emotional reality of the situation. 

“We can get more food,” MJ says. “If we’re careful.” This is not the answer Ned was looking for. He drops heavily onto the couch, covering his face with his hand. Peter reaches out to pay him on the shoulder. “And we can start working on clearing Peter’s name or whatever. But I’m gonna need like ten hours of sleep before we get started.”

  
  
  


“How are you so good at this?” he asks her in the kitchen, somewhere between minutes and an hour later, the mind numbing task of unpacking making the time warp around them. 

She raises her eyebrows. “I, uh, just sort the granola bars by flavor and-”

“No, I mean the whole evading the government, stocking up on non perishables… thing,” he clarifies, waving a hand around at the cabin before he returns to stacking cans in the cabinets. 

She shrugs. “It’s fun,” she says. It almost makes him smile for the first time in six hours. Like most facts about her it’s surprising but inevitable. “I ran away like seven times in middle school.”

He fumbles a can of corn. 

“Not for any reason,” she continues, side eyeing him. “It’s fun. I read a lot of YA. It really glamorizes the whole runaway thing.” She gathers a handful of granola bars and packs them into a drawer. “Plus I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news that much recently but with the amount of economic and political turmoil in the wake of the Blip, we’re kinda hurtling towards dystopia. Thought it would best to prepare for the worst.” She pats the counter. “Ta da.”

“Wow,” he says. She is, once again, nothing short of a miracle, somehow, amazingly everything he needs as his life is tossed and thrown. He likes her so much. For all of it. “That’s, uh… fortuitous.”

She passes behind him, her shoulder brushing against his back as she grabs May’s duffel bag from the table. He tries not to shiver, but his brain still has one foot in crush mode, so hyper aware of her and every time she’s close. 

“For you, maybe,” she says. “Just good planning on my part.” More granola bars are poured out onto the counter, plastic scratching against the marble. “And if this place gets compromised you’re losing your invitation to my nuclear fallout bunker.”

  
  
  


For once, falling asleep is easier than anticipated. The sleeping bag is surprisingly comfortable once it’s properly surrounded with pillows and blankets, like an elongated nest. 

That doesn’t mean it’s good sleep. It rarely is. 

Gratefully it’s nothing new, despite the nightmare fuel the whole day had been.

Just reruns. Ben and Titan and Tony. May crying, Ned in danger, snow globes. 

(He’s traumatized about snow globes now, saw one in a gift shop in the airport and started feeling claustrophobic. He should probably needs a therapist but how to even start explaining that one.)

MJ screaming.  _ Help me! Peter? What's going on? _ Just echoing forever, bouncing off the inside of his skull. He feels like he’s falling, waits for a floor he can’t see to come up and meet him. 

_ Peter? Help! _

He wakes up with a gasp in his throat and drags his hand out of the tangle of blankets to press to his chest, his heart racing in his palm. 

“Peter?” A hushed whisper, ghosting over to him through the dark. MJ, curled up on her side on the couch, burrowed under blankets despite the heat. His sleeping bag runs parallel to her, and facing her like this, even yards away, feels oddly intimate, makes his heart race for less terrible reasons. Her eyes are locked onto him and he feels warm all over.

“MJ?” he says, his voice breaking over it, giving out halfway through, sleep hoarse and deeply exhausted. He clears his throat and tries again. “Yeah?”

Her head disappears into the blankets and she rolls out of the couch. He stares up at her, standing there barefoot in an mathletes t-shirt that’s two sizes big on her and a pair of leggings. The moonlight tangles in her curls, casts her in angles. His mouth goes dry. 

“Um,” she says, shifting her weight around. “I’m gonna come over.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “If that’s okay.”

“Oh,” he says. “Um, yeah. Yes. That’s, uh, yes.”

Her lips quirk, a blink-and-you-missed-it smile. 

Her steps are silent as she pads over, her eyes darting over to Ned sleeping over by the TV, to the window and the cracks of light pushing through the blinds. He scoots backward as she lays out on her side, propping her head up with her palm. 

“Hey,” she says, quiet, like her voice just exists in the space between them. 

“Hi,” he replies, leaning onto his back, staring up at her. 

“You good?” Her hand brushes up against his elbow and it takes maximum effort to not jump out of his skin. 

“Uh,” he says, blinking at her. 

“You were tossing and turning,” she says, tilting her head. 

“Right,” he says. “It happens.” He pushes his hair back. “I’m good.”

She narrows her eyes, scanning him like he’s a particularly interesting word problem she has to solve. 

“Um, are you… good?” he asks.

She leans down and presses her mouth to his. He doesn’t have to think before he’s closing his eyes and leaning up as best he can at this angle, planting on hand flat on the ground, reaching for hers with the other. Her fingers lace through his and squeeze. 

She pulls back but doesn’t go far. Her breaths ghost over his cheek. 

“Is this cool?” she asks. He nods violently, leaning up to meet her halfway.

Kissing MJ is easier than he thought it would be. Not that they’ve done it a lot, or for long, or anything particularly complicated. It soft and careful, and makes everything zing, makes his heart race and his brain clear out. 

Time doesn’t stick, just flows over him, slips right away. The only thing left is MJ, kissing MJ, placing a hand on her side where she’s warm, for balance as she shifts over him, her knees bracketing his hips, her hand pressing his down into the sleeping bag. 

He wonders if they should try something more complicated. It seems enough to just keep at this, careful and precise, an easy ebb and flow of pressing in and pulling back. It’s more than enough. Makes him breathless and lightheaded, until he needs to pull back in order to catch his breath again. 

“Thank you,” he says, letting his head fall back against the pillows. She raises an eyebrow. “For… earlier, not for… well, uh, thank you for this too.”

She sweeps her bangs behind her ear. “I kinda have a vested interest in keeping you out of jail,” she says. 

It makes something in his chest feel melty. “I’m pretty sure you can’t really be implicated in anything,” he offers. He reaches up, letting his fingers skim along the curve of her ear, her curls against the backs of his knuckles. “At least before the whole resisting arrest thing.”

“Hey, I haven’t seen a warrant,” she says. He can feel her chest against his, in and out, shaky like she’s half as nervous as he is about things like proximity and touching. “Plus, I was talking about how I’ve spent the past two years seducing you.”

He laughs and nearly chokes on when she leans in and kisses him again, feather light and brief. 

“So you seduced me?” he asks, smiling so wide his cheeks hurt. 

“What, Parker?” she asks, pressing her mouth to the edge of his jaw. “Do you not feel properly courted?”

  
  
  


“I’m a little scared,” he confesses, later, after kissing and more kissing, mouths and jawlines and the length of her throat, smiling and trying not to laugh too loud, trying new things and learning what’s fun, all of it feeling like studying for a test he’s slowly realizing he’s going to ace. “I think.”

“Good,” she says, squeezing his hand.

“Yeah?”

“That’s not too scared and it’s not not scared,” she says. “Which is good. It means you won’t do anything stupid.”

He wraps his arms tighter around her waist, burying his face in her shoulder. She makes it all sound so easy. Like she won’t let him do anything stupid. Like he just has to hold it together and she’ll fix it all for him. 

_ I think I love you _ . Is a thing he thinks and immediately decides not to say out loud for another two to three business months. 

“Thanks, MJ,” he says instead and for a moment let’s himself imagine this is all gonna work out okay. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again for reading!!! Hope you liked it and let me know what you think in the comments!


End file.
